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iPhone 6 and 6 Plus: Initial Thoughts

After months of rumors, Apple finally announced the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. Is it what we expected?

Like any Apple fan eagerly awaiting news, I counted down the hours until the live event, which started at 6 PM UK time on September 9th.

However, within minutes of it starting, the live stream was plagued with drop outs, test card screens, and a foreign voiceover for the first 20 minutes. While the voice disappeared, the other problems carried through out the whole live event.

In a bizarre twist, you needed an Apple device to view the stream, which seemed a bit daft, alienating potential customers.

It seems Apple can’t keep their products secret anymore, and most of the leaked images and specs were spot on – or was this a deliberate thing on their part, throwing a few bones to the crowd to divert attention from their ‘one more thing’ product – not the iWatch, but the Apple Watch.

Screen

In retaliation to Android users taunting our ‘small screens’ (and yes, I think that’s a big reason) Apple released the iPhone 6 with a 4.7” screen and the iPhone 6 Plus with a 5.5” screen. This is upped from the 3.5” screen of the iPhone 4s and earlier, and the 4” screen of the iPhone 5/5c/5s.

The iPhone 6 Plus also has a higher DPI than the iPhone 6 and previous iPhones.

Processor & RAM

Full specs are still not known. Processor speed and RAM were not revealed by Apple at the event and are not mentioned on their site, but a quad-core 64-bit processor with 1 GB RAM at least has to be on the table. We do know they feature an A8 chip and M8 motion coprocessor – stepped up from the A7 and M7 in the iPhone 5s.

Storage

People have been asking for a 128 GB iPhone for a while, and Apple didn’t disappoint. The new iPhones are also available in 64 GB and oddly 16 GB, cutting the 32 GB model.

Camera

The camera is still an 8 megapixel (MP) camera, which I did find a little bizarre when others are pushing even higher – but then maximum megapixels has never been high on Apple’s list. After all, remember the original iPhone and iPhone 3G with their paultry 2 MP fixed focus camera.

To be fair, camera quality is not all about megapixels, but it does seem strange that they haven’t upped it since the iPhone 4s.

It also has a protruding camera, which I am not too keen on. I can see this getting damaged, unless it is meant to be used with a case and have the camera flush with a case.

Blah Blah Blah

The rest of the specs were full of Apple super phrases for their take on technology, which to most people means nothing in everyday use.

Requirements

To use an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, you will need a Mac with Mac OS X 10.6.8 or a PC with Windows XP SP3 upwards. It is nice to see Apple keeping Snow Leopard in the mix, but I do find it odd Windows XP is supported.

These requirements are the same as the iPhone 5.

Apple Watch

I will touch slightly on the Apple Watch – not the iWatch as rumoured – purely because the new iPhones tie in with it. However, the Apple Watch won’t work with an iPhone 4s، as it requires an iPhone 5 upwards.

iOS 8

The new iPhones will come with iOS 8, which in itself looks a great new version, it runs on the iPhone 4s upwards. Okay, some of the new features require the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus because of the new chips in them for health and NFC – but if these don’t interest you, you won’t be missing much.

Conclusion

Its a new iPhone, so if you are someone who likes iPhones, then you probably would like one – but apart from the new bells and whistles, which after a few weeks would fade away and you would carry on using your phone as you have done previous – there is little of interest for me.

If you do go for one, the big question is, Which size?

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